If you ARE interested in dead simple smartphone apps for album cover design, check out the new TAD mobile app: http://tadtheapp.com I am not affiliated with it, just think it's interesting. Given that most people now view album art on a smartphone, or as a thumbnail on a PC, I'm not sure what the prejudice is against designing it on a phone. Perhaps it depends on what you are using it for, but if you are not doing a hard copy physical CD release (where of course, you need a high resolution CMYK file) or printed collateral or a higher resolution digital ad, I think using a smartphone app is a valid option DIY and less expensive than hiring a professional designer.
.

The artwork which you choose for your album can greatly influence how listeners feel about your music, and simply not bothering to include any is a lost opportunity for personal branding. The following article offers tips and suggests several tools for creating engaging and original album art....

Wow Chris. This is perhaps the most comprehensive post I have ever seen on crowdfunding. Every musician considering raising money on ANY platform should read every word of this article first. You covered so many of the issues and all the steps from deciding which platform to adding new premiums - and everything in between. A new classic evergreen post! I'm looking forward to hearing the new album, too!

I’m now thirty days into a PledgeMusic campaign to fund my first new album in five years. The following article combines my own thoughts on building and running a (hopefully) successful campaign with excerpts from an interview with Benji Rogers, the founder and president of PledgeMusic. ...

It's worth pointing out the Andrew Watts is a sample size of one, and does not represent teens as a whole. As researcher Danah Boyd points out in this article on Business Insider (she wrote a book about teen behavior on social media), there are plenty of African American teens who know what Twitter is. http://www.businessinsider.com/danah-boyd-an-old-fogeys-analysis-of-a-teenagers-view-on-social-media-2015-1

By Chris Robley on The DIY Musician Blog How are teens using the big social platforms when it comes to building relationships, sharing media, and discovering music? Well, maybe a better question to ask yourself first is: do you care?If your fanbase is comprised mostly of motorcycle-loving ret...

I think you make a lot of good points, Brian. As Sam says above, "authentic writing with meaning and soul will out perform..." I think content marketing at it's best is art - it provides information and/or entertainment, and sells product along the way. Many consumer brands have successfully embraced that tactic, like Oreo and Red Bull. Quality content provides something useful to the content consumer. It is an attention-getter, a companion product or loss leader, if you will, for the "actual" product. Marketing in it's most effective form has always been about informing the customer and providing value in the purchase process, not marketing just for the sake of marketing. But marketing is as much an art as music - and often just as subjective! In the case of us musicians, the saleable product is often our music. We shouldn't be afraid to use content marketing to get attention for the things we sell (music, performance, merch). Definitions of quality content vary widely. One man's (or woman's) crappy content is another person's valuable information. One thing I do not think can be argued: publishing good content (blogs, etc.) without making the link to something saleable (recorded music, live performance, merchandise) is as unsustainable as publishing bad content in order to blatantly push a good product. And publishing badly written content to sell badly written music doesn't work. But people will hang on every piece of bad content that comes from famous musicians, just because they are interested fans. The difficult bridge to cross elegantly, I think for many indie musicians, is just getting compensated as a maker, period. Whether it's writing, visual art, photography, music or whatever thing you are selling as an artist.

{UPDATED] By Brian Thompson from ZenThinking.net and Thorny Bleeder; writer, podcaster, and author of the upcoming book, "Sparks to Awaken." Content marketing is dead. or perhaps I should say, it makes me feel dead. whether you realize or not, it probably makes you feel quite empty and lifeles...

Clyde, I will miss your wit, your fine tech and music industry reporting, your excellent grammar, your research skills, your truly amazingly prolific output, and your insightful and accurate analysis of current music business events on Hypebot. You have challenged me and supported me as I learned to write about this crazy music industry, and for that I will always be grateful. I wish you nothing but the best going forward. I know you will continue to offer the industry a bright mirror of itself.

"The Only Thing That Is Constant Is Change” - Heraclitus After hundreds of important posts, Clyde Smith is leaving Hypebot. Clyde quite wonderfully helped me to guide Hypebot during three years of strong growth. I and many others in the music and tech communities, will sincerely miss his work...

Here's just one of the remarkable things about Patrick/Praverb/PTheWyse/Earl (I asked him once how he preferred to be addressed). He wasn't just beloved in the Hip Hop community. He was appreciated and respected in the community of online music marketing bloggers and consultants - most of whom, like me, aren't black, urban, and male. Yeah, I'll say it because no one else will: Patrick crossed the color and gender line with his advice and his no-BS writing - both long form (blog) and short (Twitter). That's rare in the music world, where so much advice flies around, yet most of the time it stays strictly within the silos of music genre - hip hop in hip hop, country in country, rock in rock communities. But Patrick didn't care what color or gender you were. Whether you were his colleague, peer, advisee, or friend, he was a professional who spoke the truth about what he saw in the music industry, and shared generously what he had learned. He was also a thoughtful and talented musician. He could be a little gruff sometimes, but he was a real person. I think that shone through in his online presence. That's why so many people who never met him except through online interactions felt the sadness of his leaving us. He was a genuine human being, a good person, someone who told the truth in a world that is full of posers and pretenders, hustlers and hopefuls. My two most recent interactions with Patrick were to ask him to contribute to my 25 Music Experts Advice on Releasing and Indie CD, and then to personally ask him if he had composed any music about the Ferguson situation. He contributed to my blog post, and then replied about Ferguson that he had not written any music, because he didn't feel he knew enough about the situation to write about it. I respect that.

Earl Patrick McNease, better known as Praverb the Wyse, passed on September 17. I didn't start checking out his DIY industry blogging until this summer and I was late to the news of his passing as well. But the response on Facebook and in the hip hop press makes it clear how deeply he touched t...

Waaaah (sp?). I can't record anymore and direct upload my podcasts using my iPhone. I'm disappointed. I pay for the space with my Premium account, what is the issue? That direct record/upload feature was nice for podcasters using SoundCloud as their primary hosting platform and not doing a lot of post-production. Also, for recording and hosting ambient sounds and sharing them.

SoundCloud's new iOS app is getting lots of coverage. Many are excited by the design and it is an awesome looking app that encourages checking out new music. Unfortunately in their quest to strip down and start over much of the functionality has been stripped out as well. Musicians getting angr...

This is a great analysis. "Music downloads are monetized CRM for Apple, a means of enhancing the device experience." So true. And while music is tied to device sales, device sales also underwrite a streaming music service, a service which is not currently profitable standing alone. Much as cellphone service was viable only as a bundled service in it's infancy, so is streaming. This will end up an industry with only a few players, those with a diversified portfolio and deep pockets (Google, Apple...).

By Mark Mulligan of Music Industry Blog. Although the Apple-Beats deal is about far more than just streaming music, it is nonetheless an important part of the puzzle. Apple has been going slow with streaming, introducing cloud experiences (iCloud, iTunes Match, iTunes Radio, Video rentals) slo...

A bold and interesting move forward in the inevitable consolidation and vertical integration of streaming music. I wonder if any other streaming services are considering acquiring music crowdfunding sites like Pledgemusic, distributors like CD Baby, or performance sites like StageIt or ConcertWindow.

(UPDATED) Beats Music has acquired direct to fan platform Topspin Media, the music streamer announced this morning. CEO Ian Rogers, who left the top spot at Topspin last year to launch Beats, said the acquisition will help "unite the world of music listeners and music creators." The deal is th...

As you point out, it's refreshing to see financial transparency in an industry that seems to have a bias against sharing information. It would be even nicer to see more financial information shared by labels and publishers, who I think (but I can't be sure) still make the lion's share of money in the music industry. If and when the entire supply chain revenue becomes more transparent, I think it will become even clearer that artists have never been the ones who made most of the money. It's the middlemen (and women). Keating is that rare musician who has succeeded, after many years, in making a reasonable living from her music, and she does it by going as directly to her fans as she can. On the subject of YouTube monetization, perhaps Keating is deliberately choosing not to monetize there. Someday musicians may be complaining as loudly about Google not compensating artists fairly as we do today about labels and PROs. At least with labels and PROs, there's more than one. Google is effectively a monopoly.

Zoë Keating recently released her full 2013 digital music revenue report that has become a trademark educational device and marketing tool. She breaks down sales and streaming revenue giving both numbers of downloads/streams and revenue per channel. YouTube is listed with almost 2 million strea...

Let's face it, nothing is free anymore. Immersed in a culture where consumer's call the shots, the cost of free is rapidly inflating. Consider the difference in profit from the sale of a single vs. an entire album. The fact that we have the ability to single out desired content leaves artists i...

Great article, Clyde. I agree with everything you are saying. Twitter, in particular, and cable news, have transformed both the delivery and definition of news. I know I get all my music news now from Twitter - for example, Lou Reed's recent death. Yet, what I wanted was more than just the 140 character news of his death, I wanted a link to read more about his life. For that, I went to the website of a more traditional news outlet, which in turn, relied on the official statement given in a press release. For album releases, I think the press release serves the narrower function that you outlined - it's a one stop shop for journalists to get all the links they might need to write their story. So it's a critical component of any musician's release strategy and marketing, but it doesn't drive the story. The back story has to be larger than just the music release to be newsworthy these days! If the press release can compellingly describe that back story, it can be very valuable (see Shelby Earl's video release on Rolling Stone today as a great back story example well-executed).

The press release has lost value in recent years as the web has opened up a wide range of communication channels that bypass traditional gatekeepers. Yet, despite the reduced role of press releases, they remain in use on a daily basis and are the source for music industry coverage from small b...

Live shows are important at every stage of most musician's careers whether or not they are touring artists. Live shows are where musicians and hardcore fans fall in love, break up, reunite and grow old together. For some folks live shows are the only place music truly exists. So whether you in...

I think David touches on the real issue: were Reznor's DIY marketing efforts less than successful because he is not willing to work hard enough, doesn't have the marketing expertise to do it himself - or because the music wasn't that good and didn't appeal to fans (old or new)?
Musicians today have to constantly keep producing and innovating on BOTH musical and marketing fronts because it is a highly competitive landscape. Established artists are not just competing with other established, label-supported artists (like Swift, Timberlake and Jay Z with their massive marketing budgets), they are also competing with quirky one-hit YouTube viral sensations. Not to mention that if you want to hear really innovative new music, Soundcloud has a lot of it.
The field is wider, the competition more fierce, and attention spans shorter. Relevance and longevity have always been tough to master in the music industry.

In a fairly revealing interview with Spin, Trent Reznor reminds us of why it's often dangerous to turn musicians into ideological symbols. Reznor has had a strong association with DIY music but recently chose to take his work to Columbia Records. In opening up about his choices he ridicules cu...

Every other industry has figured out how to standardize and manage sensitive data: medical, retail, government, financial, supply chain management. The music industry needs a standardized metadata protocol and standard APIs for passing the attribution information. The issue is not data security - that is technically solvable. If you want to know where the roadblocks lie, look to who currently profits most from the lack of transparency. Accounting is not a technical issue, it's a political issue among the stakeholders who make the money.

By Guenter Loibl, founder and CEO of Rebeat Digital. There are now more than a dozen companies that can easily distribute your music to hundreds of outlets, within 24 hours. So why is digital distribution now consuming more label resources than ever, devouring label profits, and creating chaos...

I think David is right spot on. This is a waiting game and the infrastructure players can afford to sit back and let the VCs spend their money trying out different interfaces and subscription models, and when the money is gone, they will scoop up the best technology and either use it or kill it. It's hard to see Google challenging Apple successfully on streaming music - they have the existing huge paying customer installed base with iTunes, they know mobile customers well, they know tablets, they have great software engineers.
Unless they are thwarted by the labels through overly onerous licensing structures, it's their race to lose.

By David Dufresne (@DavidDufresne), CEO of Bandzoogle, a website builder and marketing platform for independent music artists. I think when Apple and Google finally launch subscription music services (or partner up with an existing one), and bundle them with each iOS and Android device sold, t...

This is a great post and rings so true for me as an musician, and also seems to ring true for many of my musician friends. We make music because when someone walks up to you after a performance (as I experienced this very weekend) and says, with tears visible in their eyes: "That one song, it really moved me," or "I'm inspired to buy an instrument and be creative," - THAT's what makes it all worthwhile. We do make music to connect. We make music because it speaks for us and to us in a way that words cannot.

Andrew Dubber is Professor of Music Industries Innovation at Birmingham City University, and other stuff. When you study the independent music industries, there’s a lot of talk about money and how so little of it moves around. But when you talk to musicians, the money is almost never the thing...

The digital marketers that we go to for advice have been telling us for weeks that there are signs that Facebook is losing a bit of it's luster, particularly with teens. A new IPSOS MediaCT and Wikia poll of 1203 13-to-18-year olds confirms it, showing 93% checked YouTube weekly, while just 6...

Hey Brad - Thanks for the comment! Just keep doing it - it does get easier and easier. For sure I will be writing about my Tom Jackson workshop later this year, I have a feeling it will be great writing fodder!

By Musician and Marketing Consultant Solveig Whittle (@shadesofsolveig). The craft of stage performance is a critical part of every performing artist’s success. This weekend, I watched three excellent performances: Cirque du Soleil’s Amaluna, the emerging Seattle female music duo Lemolo, and v...

Hey Chick - Thanks for the question. I did not have to pay Universal anything for the license. It's important to note, however, that I made it clear to them that I am not looking to make any money from this video.

By Musician and Marketing Consultant Solveig Whittle (@shadesofsolveig). Last year I recorded a cover of an old favorite song of mine called Menta e Rosmarino (I Won’t Be Lonely) by the Italian artist, Zucchero (AKA Sugar Fornaciari). He’s a famous singer, songwriter, and guitarist in Spain an...

I don't often see "Jimmy Iovine" and the term "artist empowerment" occurring in the same article. I think you are right about what is missing from current streaming music platforms, but I don't see Daisy as focused on the artist. I think Iovine is good at catering to consumers, but "artist empowerment"? I think not. We all had hopes that the new MySpace would do just that, but it has disappointed. There is a vacuum. A service that builds artist-fan communities, facilitates indie music discovery, empowers artists and their brands - and still makes money - would be welcome. I don't see that happening with Daisy.

By Mark Mulligan, independent music analyst and author of Music Industry Blog. Beats' codenamed Daisy subscription service has been getting a puzzlingly large amount of coverage for a service that isn't even launched yet. Beats' Jimmy Iovine has somewhat smartly positioned Daisy as a challenge...

The SF MusicTech Summit takes place February 19 in San Francisco featuring a full day of speakers, presentations and opportunities for informal meetings with the cream of the crop in music tech from developers to artists to entrepreneurs. Taking place in what is arguably the center for music t...

Interesting thought. Certainly Chirpify has a lot of growth potential - and has some very visible users in artists like Amanda Palmer. Artists need tools like Hootsuite and Chirpify to both identify and market to their fans online.

By musician, marketer and provocateur Solveig Whittle (@shadesofsolveig). Seeing that many musicians and music marketing industry people use Twitter to discuss and promote music, I thought it might be useful to provide an overview of one of the most commonly used tools for managing social medi...

By musician, marketer and provocateur Solveig Whittle (@shadesofsolveig). Seeing that many musicians and music marketing industry people use Twitter to discuss and promote music, I thought it might be useful to provide an overview of one of the most commonly used tools for managing social medi...